Second Chancesby Alasdair McPherson

Genre:HumourSwearwords: None.Description:Reincarnation – reserved for the truly evil._____________________________________________________________________Cleopatra came into our Oxfam shop last Saturday. I had
been chatting to a customer about how, sometimes, you wish you could have
another life. Her car had just failed its MOT in a very big way and we were
agreed that it would be nice to live in a world where all the surprises were
pleasant.

The next customer had listened, smiling, to our exchange. “We have all had other lives, you know.” “Do you mean that we have all lived before?” “Certainly, although only a very few lucky people remember.” “I think I may have been a cat in a previous life but I cannot remember the experience.” She looked at me very carefully, perhaps to see if I was teasing. Then she asked me why I chose a cat. “Well, I am indolent, I like comfort and …” I was going to say that I liked having my tummy tickled but she was now looking so earnest that I hastily changed my mind. “My clan is a branch of Clan Chattan, the family of the cat – our badge is a wild cat.” She nodded, sagely, at this. I rang up her purchase on the till and asked if she would like a bag for it. She refused the bag, paid for the book she had chosen and, I thought, would now leave. Reincarnation was, in my opinion, worth no more than the half dozen sentences we had already traded during a lull in business. I was wrong: it was my own fault, I admit, because I cannot stop myself showing off my quirky collection of trivial memories. “I was Desiree Clary in a past life,” she offered as a Parthian shot (see what I mean!). “Do you mean the girl who was engaged to Napoleon and later became Queen of Sweden?” That opened the flood gates and the customer rehearsed the entire history of the daughter of a wealthy Marseilles family who found herself at the heart of French revolutionary affairs. I had read a book about her and might have forgotten it had it not been for the cavalier attitude of Hollywood to the pronunciation of foreign names. About half way through the five hundred odd pages of her fictional diary I recognised the story from a movie starring Brando as Napoleon. It took me that long because I understood Brando to say that the film heroine was ‘Daisy Rae’ My customer was by now treating me like the Delphic Oracle. She was, I would guess, in her mid-forties carrying about three or four kilogrammes beyond voluptuous. Her face had become quite flushed at meeting someone who knew her, so to speak, from her past. I was thinking that there is never a queue of customers when you need one when the Oxfam lothario brought me a coffee down from the store room where he had been dodging work for the last hour. I summarised my conversation with the customer but he did not listen since his ears were, metaphorically speaking, already deep in her generous cleavage. “I have been reincarnated a number of times apart from Desiree, you know. I was Cleopatra and I met Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony.” She was still trying to win my attention but our very own Don Juan had insinuated himself between her and me. “I thought Cleopatras were Egyptian cigarettes. You must tell me more.” He slipped his hand under her elbow and escorted her to the door. Afternoon tea would follow but at least he had brought me a coffee before he left. If he was back before we closed I would hear yet again how irresistible she had found him. Another customer lost, I thought with a sigh. I used to worry about his success with the ladies who all, he reported, wanted to tear his clothes off. It took me a while to notice that he never went on second dates and the women started to frequent other charity shops. When I got home, I locked my doors and donned my Silver Surfer cape to spend an hour or two researching reincarnation on the World Wide Web. The reason I lock the doors is because of my lounging robe: it is plum velvet lined with fox fur and I got it from Oxfam for a small donation in the appeals box. We cannot sell it in the shop because Oxfam disapprove of the trade in animals. I feel the same, sort off, but the foxes in question were not killed at my behest or to gratify my desires. They were long dead when I first saw them so I find it hard to see what harm I do to the survival of the planet by wearing the garment. Dead is dead, after all is said and done. It just seems wiser to lock the door before I take the robe out of its hiding place to wear about the house. As so often happens, the search of the internet was absorbing but almost totally unhelpful. In summary, I discovered that believers believe and sceptics remain wholly unconvinced. Most of the accounts of past lives seem to be set in periods or places that are relatively well known. The individuals are almost always close to but not directly involved in the action. Ladies in waiting, doctors and common soldiers are popular. My customer had chosen, or been chosen by, just such a character in Desiree. There were problems, of course, since the Queen only spoke French – she never even learned more than a few words of Swedish; the customer was from Birmingham and spoke barely intelligible English. Perhaps reincarnates are given the gift of tongues. It was also a fair bet that the customer would know much more about her alter ego than a till-jockey in a charity shop. It is just possible that I am the only Oxfam assistant who has even heard of Desiree – or Daisy Rae as I still think of her. Cleopatra was, I feel, a mistake: it would have been more believable to pose as the hand-maiden who offered the asp to the Queen. It must be a temptation to become the chief protagonist when you have regressed a couple of thousand years. You would have to be very unlucky indeed to meet a guy who had been Mark Anthony in his past life and called your bluff: “I remember you! You were the sexy little maid that was always having trouble with your peplum slipping when you were bringing in the asses milk for the Queen’s bath.” (A peplum is a Greek female garment. I only mention this because, as a teenager, I heard a song where the lady ‘did not wear a chignon’. In my heated, adolescent mind I pictured a chignon as a female undergarment like a liberty bodice, the absence of which might afford tantalising glimpses of female naughty bits.) That got me thinking. The secret of a good lie is to be sure that there is no one about who knows the truth. For example, I can declare with complete safety that adults found me to be a charming child – they did actually; there are no adults left alive to contradict me. I would be almost as safe if I claimed to be the most popular boy in school – I wasn’t – because the people who knew me then live about five hundred miles away. Then it slowly dawned on me that I had, in all likelihood, been on the receiving end of such untruths. I play badminton two days a week with a bunch of other pensioners. One of the men admits to being new to the sport, having spent his life on the tennis court, and one of the women had only ever played table tennis before she joined us. The remainder of the twenty or so regulars all played for their county in the past or were specialist instructors of badminton during their working lives. I am the only one who never progressed beyond fourth gent in the Old Kilpatrick church badminton club: I will take a bit of a risk here by asserting that I was first choice for that position! My late wife, Sally, was the best player in the club and was undisputed first lady. We played in a humble division – the twenty-third, I think – in church halls around Glasgow. Low hanging lights and obstructions altering the shape or size of the court were the rule. I remember one hall in which we played a cup tie where a beam ran across the room at just above head height leaving a gap of about five feet between it and the top of the net. It was a fair shot to play over or under the beam but a ‘let’ if you hit it. The crafty locals would aim for the beam if they were in trouble. Sally was a natural at every sport she tried. Golf club in hand she would walk up to the ball and start her back swing while she was still moving; she hit the ball dead centre and it travelled straight and true. I took a careful stance, wiggled a bit, controlled my breathing as I swung back, then either missed the ball by a good inch or took a divot that left an embryonic bunker. She was offered membership of the Glasgow churches’ leading club when we went along as guest members. I had helped a friend with some mathematics and he repaid my kindness by giving me one of the most humiliating evenings of my life. He was either in or on the fringes of the Scottish badminton team and, to be fair, it probably had not crossed his mind that anyone could play the game as ineptly as I did. Sally fitted right in with all these high-powered folk, although I like to think they were going easy on her – it consoled me and did her no harm! It is not only amongst badminton players that I have begun to harbour doubts about credibility. My own experience supports the view that all businesses are more or less pyramidal in structure, with a great many more employees at the bottom than at the top. In retirement this is no longer true: I meet many very senior former employees but there are no more than a handful of middle managers and a total absence of actual workers. Perhaps people are promoted on retirement, so the lavvy cleaner retires as Executive Director of Hygiene. I got to thinking about my customer and her many lives. Presumably there is something like DNA that carries the personality forward from one generation to another. She had begun as Cleopatra and been re-born as a merchant’s daughter who had become a queen; now she is a very ordinary wee body, fair, fat and forty. Maybe her soul DNA is wearing out. Then it occurred to me that perhaps she had made enough progress to leave the particular wheel of life she had been on for two thousand years. When rich and famous people get to heaven perhaps they are refused entry. “Ok, Genghis, you admit to slaughtering ten thousand people during your lifetime. Just you go back down there and see if you can keep your sword in its scabbard this time! “Gabriel, would you see him off the premises. There’s a wee hairy that’s been out of her skull on banned substances since primary three who has just got up the spout in Easterhouse.” “I’m Michael, by the way. You only have two Archangels and I’d have thought you could tell us apart after all these millennia.” “It’s just that you’re both perfect. Anyway, you make sure that Genghis has a difficult birth.” “I’ll make sure the father gets banged up in the Bar L so he doesn’t knife her. He’s a psychopath and I know how touchy you get when thy will is not done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” “Just make sure you give her lalldy at the birth.” “To hear is to obey, master.” “And you can cut out the ethnic jokes. If I had wanted a genie I would just have given the Angle-poise a wee rub.” Ordinary mortals simply do not have the scope to sin on the same scale as the mighty. When we get up there our small sins will probably be dealt with by Samuel Pepys or James Boswell. We will be sin-binned in Purgatory for a century or two before we are admitted to Paradise (or Ibrox). God and the Archangels will only appear when really big offenders show up. They will have to be sent back into positions of power to give them the chance to show they are truly repentant. In one of his lives, I hope Hitler learns to play the cornet since it seems likely that he will be the only one left to sound the Last Trump.

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About the Author

Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in﻿ the way until recently. He has already penned five novels and many short stories. His two latest novels, The Island and Pilgrimage of Grace, are McStorytellers publications.